The desk
Compare AI Storyboards
“Which storyboard tool is best” has no answer, because four quite different jobs are sold under the same word. A tool that is excellent at one of them is frequently useless at another.
So the first thing this desk intends to do is say which job a tool is for, and only then say anything about how well it does it.
Four jobs, one word
the indexThe pitch board
Made to sell an idea to a client in a room. Looks matter more than anything here, and technical accuracy barely matters at all — nobody is shooting from it. Generated panels are a genuinely good fit.
The shooting board
Handed to a crew on the day. Needs correct framing, consistent screen direction and shot numbers people can call out. Beauty is optional; being wrong is expensive.
The animatic
Panels cut to timing, usually with scratch audio. The board has become a video, so what matters is duration per panel and export to an editor — a still image grid cannot do this job at all.
The personal previs
One person working out whether a sequence holds together. Speed and cost dominate; nobody else will ever see it. The free tier is the product.
What separates them
requirementsDoes it need to be reorderable?
For a shooting board and an animatic, yes — rearranging is most of the work. For a pitch board, a finished grid is fine and often preferable.
Does the same face need to recur?
Critical for anything narrative, irrelevant for a board that is mostly product shots and typography. This one requirement rules out more tools than any other.
Does it leave the tool?
A shooting board becomes a PDF; an animatic becomes a video or an edit-decision list. If the export does not exist, the tool is a place your work lives rather than a step in a pipeline.
Who else touches it?
Boards get marked up by directors, clients and ADs. Comments, versions and a shareable link matter enormously for some of these jobs and not at all for others.
How this will be written
house rulesNo invented numbers
No scores out of ten, no star ratings, no tier boards. Where something is better, it gets said in words and the reason is shown.
Only claims we can stand behind
Nothing describes a test that did not happen. Pricing and feature claims are checked against the vendor's own pages.
No paid placements
Nothing here is sponsored, and outbound links carry no affiliate tracking and earn no commission. No company pays to be included or to be written about more kindly.
This site is new and the review index above lists jobs rather than products — nothing has been reviewed yet and nothing here is ranked. When reviews land, each will say which of the four jobs it is judging the tool against.